


two falling sparks

by zach_stone



Category: Firewatch (Video Game), IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Bonding, Emotional Healing, Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, Inspired by Firewatch (Video Game), Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Medium Slow Burn??, do not need to be familiar with firewatch to understand the fic!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22688053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zach_stone/pseuds/zach_stone
Summary: "So, what’s your damage, Eds?”Richie says.Eddie blinks down at the walkie. He’s so tired, he’s been hiking all day and it’s only sheer exhaustion that’s keeping him from freaking out about how itchy he feels right now and how he doesn’t see a shower anywhere in here. He scrubs at his eyes and then presses the button again. “Excuse me?”“People take this job when they wanna get away from shit,”Richie says casually, like they’re discussing the weather.“So what’s wrong with you?”“I — that’s — what the fuck’s wrong withyou?”Eddie splutters. He’s way too fucking tired for this. Instinctively, he curls in the fingers of his left hand, running his thumb over the pale band of skin on his ring finger.Richie laughs, a scratchy sound that makes Eddie’s chest tighten.“Hey man, maybe I just like trees.”--Or, Eddie Kaspbrak, newly divorced, takes a summer job as a fire lookout in the Shoshone National Forest, with only the voice on the other end of his walkie talkie to keep him company. Inspired by the video game Firewatch.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 123
Kudos: 1067





	two falling sparks

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Две падающие искры (two falling sparks)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26268415) by [Fil_l](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fil_l/pseuds/Fil_l)



> this is a story about emotional healing and falling in love with someone based on their voice alone. it's also a bit of an homage to firewatch, one of my all-time favorite video games. you don't need to know anything about firewatch to appreciate this fic, since i'm borrowing the basic setting and premise but changing the plot pretty much entirely. 
> 
> my knowledge of being a fire lookout, and the shoshone national forest, comes entirely from the video game, so if anything is incorrect or nonsensical, take it up with campo santo. 
> 
> CONTENT WARNINGS: mentions of past spousal and parental abuse, mentions of past homophobic violence, internalized homophobia, panic attacks, forest fires. i think that's all.
> 
> fic title is a line from "from afar" by vance joy, which overall isn't thematically relevant but i liked the imagery of that lyric. ok enjoy!!!

**_June_ **

**DAY 1**

Eddie Kaspbrak arrives at the Thorofare trailhead in the Shoshone National Forest on June 7, 2010. He gets out of his SUV and grabs his heavy gear bag from the passenger seat. The air is hot, the sky bright blue with a smattering of clouds; the humming of bugs fills the air, and everything smells unfamiliar, like pine and earth. Eddie swings the backpack onto his shoulders. He pulls out his phone and looks over his text messages one last time, and then powers down the phone and locks it in his glove compartment, before locking up the car and shoving the keys into his jeans pocket. 

“See you in three months,” he tells the SUV. 

Eddie has only been camping once, with his father, when he was six years old and his father was eight months away from an unexpected death. Eddie’s never been to Wyoming before, let alone living in the middle of the forest in a wooden tower for three months, but that’s what he’s about to do. He came across the ad online, while he was neck-deep in a post-divorce life crisis, and — it felt like a sign. _Fire lookout wanted in Shoshone National Forest._ It was so inherently opposite from everything Eddie thought he was; everything he’d been made to believe he was. His mother would roll over in her grave at the very idea of Eddie living in the wilderness, stomping around in the dirt and actively searching for fires. And Myra — god, she would’ve had a meltdown, clung to Eddie, not even let him out the door. 

He applied for the job before he could second-guess himself. Then he _got_ the job, and he took an extended leave (without pay) from work. He’d been with the insurance firm for ten years, and he’d never once taken a vacation longer than three days. He’s one of their top analysts, and his clients love him. Anyway, his boss took one look at his pale face and shadowed eyes and said, “You know what, Kaspbrak, I think the fresh air’ll do you good,” which was professional speak for “This divorce has made you look like real horseshit.” 

Eddie walks up to the bulletin board that marks the trailhead. There’s a map of the forest, identical to the one currently folded up in his pocket alongside a compass; there are also several notices, one an extreme fire hazard warning that prohibits the use of fireworks, and another that states _You’re in their country — learn to live with bears._ Eddie lets the rush of primal terror flood through him, lets himself feel the familiar flight response, and then grits his teeth and starts down the trail. 

The divorce really had put him through the wringer. When Myra asked him why, _why_ was he doing this to her, too many reasons fought for focus in his mind — _because you don’t let me be my own person, because you might not mean to but you’re hurting me, because I can’t live like I’m sick forever_ — but what he ended up saying was, “Because I’m gay.”

And oh, she didn’t like that at all. She didn’t _believe_ it, told him outright that she refused to accept it. And Eddie, feeling braver than he’d felt in decades, told her that it didn’t matter whether or not she accepted it, because it was fucking _true._ And Myra said, “I always knew you’d leave me, Eddie,” which was word-for-word what Eddie’s mother had said when Eddie moved away for college, and that’s when Eddie realized several things about Myra and his mother in quick succession, and that was enough to get him out the damn door. 

It was a long process. Eddie came into work looking sleep-deprived and depressed, enough so that no one even bothered attempting smalltalk with him most days. It was only one month after the paperwork finalized that Eddie came across the ad. _You’re out of the straitjacket for the first time in your sad little life, Kaspbrak,_ he thought to himself as he emailed his application to Mike Hanlon, the lead supervisor for the lookout program. _It’s time to fucking live a little._

The entire forest is washed in orange as the sun sets, the sky a fire of pink and yellow. He looks up at the light disappearing behind the peaks of the mountains. His legs and feet hurt, but something in him revels in the ache. He hasn’t moved his body like this in — god, _years,_ maybe not since he was a kid and snuck out to play with his friends whenever he could escape his mother’s watchful eye. He hears birdsong and leaves rustling, and he still has that deeply instilled knee-jerk reaction of fear, klaxons banging in his skull signaling _danger, danger, retreat,_ but he presses on.

Something large shifts in the trees ahead, and as Eddie rounds a corner he’s face-to-face with a buck, watching him from a few feet away. They maintain eye contact, Eddie’s gone wide with panic that has him frozen. The buck regards him for a moment, enormous antlers protruding from its head, and then it rears up and turns to run off, into the forest and away from the trail. Eddie’s breath leaves him in a gust, and he clutches his chest. Vaguely, he wishes for his inhaler, another old habit he still can’t quite rid himself of even though he’s known he doesn’t really have asthma for fifteen years. He used to carry the inhaler around even after he knew it was only a placebo. Something about it was reassuring, the weight of it in his pocket. Just in case.

Now, his backpack is a reassuring weight on his shoulders instead, and tells himself he’s prepared. He, Eddie Kaspbrak, can do this. 

The moon is waning overhead, the sky bright with stars, when he pushes through the brush and comes upon the Two Forks lookout tower. There’s a floodlight attached to the roof, shining down on the clearing where the tower sits, a winding set of stairs looping around the structure and leading up to the top. He sighs, his knees twinging, and heads up.

When he reaches the top, there’s a little walkway that wraps around the entire perimeter, and he takes a minute to circle it. A bunch of extra fuel tanks for the generator sit at one corner, but besides that there’s not much else. The mountains look blue-green in the dark, the trees blurred down to smudges of ash and charcoal-black shadow. He leans against the guardrail and tries to picture flames eating away at the quiet dark of the landscape. He wonders if there will be any fires this summer.

He hopes not.

Eddie pushes open the door and flips the switch on the wall so the generator kicks in, powering up the lights in the small space. Eddie drops his pack on the floor by the bed and puts his hands on his hips, taking in the little room that’s going to be his home for the next three months. There’s the twin bed, a little kitchenette, a round map table in the center of the room, boxes of supplies and provisions for him to unpack, and —

And a desk with a walkie-talkie that’s currently talking at him. _“Two Forks Tower, come in, Two Forks!”_ a cheery, slightly nasal male voice says, crackling over the radio. Eddie frowns and picks up the walkie from its charging dock, pressing down the button to speak.

“Uh, hi,” he says uncertainly. “Who’s this?”

 _“Eddie, right?”_ the guy on the radio says, still cheerful. _“I’m Richie, I’m in the lookout tower to the north.”_

“Oh,” Eddie says. He vaguely remembers Mike mentioning over the phone that Eddie’s on-site supervisor would be the lookout in the Thorofare Tower. He turns to the north-facing window, and in the distance he can see the lights of the other tower. “Right, hi.”

 _“So, what’s your damage, Eds?”_ Richie says.

Eddie blinks down at the walkie. He’s so tired, he’s been hiking all day and it’s only sheer exhaustion that’s keeping him from freaking out about how itchy he feels right now and how he doesn’t see a shower anywhere in here. He scrubs at his eyes and then presses the button again. “Excuse me?”

 _“People take this job when they wanna get away from shit,”_ Richie says casually, like they’re discussing the weather. _“So what’s wrong with you?”_

“I — that’s — what the fuck’s wrong with _you?”_ Eddie splutters. He’s way too fucking tired for this. Instinctively, he curls in the fingers of his left hand, running his thumb over the pale band of skin on his ring finger. 

Richie laughs, a scratchy sound that makes Eddie’s chest tighten. _“Hey man, maybe I just like trees.”_

“Sure,” Eddie says. He sits down on the edge of the bed and starts yanking off his boots one-handed, debating whether or not he’s exhausted enough to forego making the bed and just sleep on the bare mattress with the topsheet. He winces at the rubbery texture of the mattress and decides he’ll suck it up and put on the fitted sheet, at least. “Listen, I’ve had a really long day, okay, so I’m not in the mood for whatever weird game you’re playing right now,” he says into the walkie.

 _“Aw, but the fun’s just beginning!”_ Richie says. _“Okay, you don’t have to tell me, I can guess. Most people who come out here just got dumped. Is that it, Eddie? Some girl back home break your heart?”_

Eddie squeezes his eyes shut, his stomach churning with a sudden spike of anxious nausea. He can’t — he just can’t think about it right now. “Good night,” he says shortly, and gets up to stick the walkie back in the charging dock. He shuts off the lights, makes his bed clumsily in the dark, and falls asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow.

Richie doesn’t chime in again that night. 

**DAY 2**

Eddie wakes up to sunlight streaming in through the windows that surround the perimeter of the tower. The light is orange and the sun is low in the sky. Eddie sits straight up, cursing, and staggers out of bed. His mouth is stale with sleep, and he stumbles stiff-legged over to the desk, leaning on it so he can peer out the window. It’s late — the sun isn’t setting yet, but it definitely will be soon. Eddie scrubs at the back of his head, where his hair is sticking up, and swears again. 

The walkie crackles to life. _“Gooood morning, sunshine!”_ Richie says loudly. _“Or should I say good afternoon?”_

Eddie winces and picks up the radio. “I don’t know what the fuck happened, I never sleep in this late.”

_“Don’t worry about it, that hike’s a killer. It takes most people a couple days to recover. But hey, good news, there’s still a little daylight left if you want to explore, get yourself acquainted with your new home away from home. Sunset’s in about two hours.”_

“Right,” Eddie says into the walkie. “I guess that’s a good idea. Shit, I’m so disoriented.”

 _“Time has no meaning here,”_ Richie intones. 

Eddie snorts, wandering over to his pack and rifling through it to find a fresh pair of underwear. He hesitates, weighing the radio in one hand. “Hey,” he says, “can you — see me, right now?” 

_“Not really. I can see that there’s someone in the tower, but I can’t make out any details. Why, are you flipping me the bird?”_

Eddie walks right up to one of the north windows and sticks up his middle finger, pressing it against the glass. “You tell me,” he says.

Richie laughs. _“I’m gonna go ahead and say yes to that one. If you’re worried about me seeing you au naturale, don’t sweat it. I’m nearsighted as hell and I’m not about to go all Peeping Tom on you.”_

He sounds sincere enough, but Eddie still ends up crouching behind the kitchenette counter to change. He’s tugging on a fresh pair of shorts — it’s _hot_ out here — when the radio comes to life again.

_“Hey, so… about last night. Sorry for grilling you like, the moment you walked in the door. If you’d believe it, the kind of people who take this job don’t tend to have great social skills.”_

“I’m shocked,” Eddie deadpans. He sighs, tipping his head back against the counter. “It’s fine. I was just tired.” He looks at his bare left hand again and debates just telling Richie now — getting it out there, right up front. But he doesn’t owe Richie anything, doesn’t _know_ him, and it’s not like Richie was exactly forthcoming with any personal details of his own. Instead, Eddie asks, “Got any recommendations for exploring?”

 _“Well, there’s a_ very _exciting and important structure right outside your tower that you should probably take a look at,”_ Richie says. 

Eddie gets to his feet and pulls his shoes back on. Combing self-consciously through his bedhead, he sticks the radio on his belt and heads down the stairs. 

He sees what Richie’s talking about right away, and yanks the radio up to his mouth to say, “Are you _shitting_ me?”

Richie cackles. _“No, but while we’re on the topic of shit…”_

“Is this the only bathroom?” Eddie asks, staring at the outhouse with dismay. He doesn’t know what he expected, but this is making his skin crawl. He’s already imagining a bleak summer of extreme constipation.

_“I mean, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Eds, but you can just whip it out and piss wherever you want. No one’s gonna tell.”_

“Ugh, shut up,” Eddie says. He squeezes the walkie in his fist and takes a deep, calming breath. The air is weird out here, very different from the city air he’s used to. It feels cleaner, in his lungs. That’s a good thing. This is all a good thing. He side-eyes the outhouse one more time and then turns back to stomp up the stairs again.

He doesn’t end up doing any exploring, just spends the remaining daylight unpacking and setting up the tower to his liking. Richie chimes in throughout the evening, mindless anecdotes and chatter that don’t require a response half the time. It’s sort of nice, Eddie thinks, like how he’d put on talk radio or the TV as background noise when he first moved into his bachelor pad after asking for the divorce. The illusion of not being alone. 

When the sun sets, it pulls Eddie’s breath away with it, the way it streaks the sky gold and pink. From his vantage point at the top of his tower, he can watch the light move over the tops of the trees as the night rolls in. He stares out the west window and picks up his walkie, initiating a conversation for the first time since he’s arrived.

“Are you looking out your window right now?” he asks.

 _“That_ is _our job, Eduardo,”_ Richie says.

Ignoring the obvious attempt to rile him, Eddie says, “Are you fucking _seeing_ this?” in sheer disbelief, waving his hand wildly in the direction of the window as if Richie can see him.

Richie laughs. _“It’s pretty fuckin’ incredible, huh?”_

“How many years have you been doing this?” Eddie asks. He grabs the desk chair and pulls it over to the west wall so he can sit, watching as the sun sinks lower and the sky goes indigo, pinpricked with stars. 

_“This’ll be my fourth summer,”_ Richie says.

“That’s a lot of time by yourself,” Eddie says. He’s not judgemental, just — surprised. He’s known Richie for all of a day and he can already tell the guy is _chatty._

 _“It is,”_ Richie agrees mildly. _“But this part never gets old.”_

**DAY 4**

In retrospect, Eddie’s honestly impressed with himself for holding out four whole days before having a meltdown. It’s a culmination of things getting to him, really — the continuous waves of overwhelming emotion that keep crashing over him the more time passes since the divorce, the fact that he has to wash himself in the sink with a washcloth because there’s no shower in the lookout tower, the sense of displacement when he wakes up to the noises of the untamed forest — but the thing that finally sets him off is a splinter of wood from the doorframe jamming underneath his fingernail. 

It fucking _hurts,_ and he shouts an expletive before yanking his hand away from the door, storming over to the first aid kit he has sitting by the sink. The tweezers shake in his hand, and it takes him three tries before he’s able to grab the splinter and pull it out. He stares at it held between the pincers of the tweezers, fuming, until he realizes his vision is starting to inexplicably blur with tears. His lungs constrict as he wheezes in a breath, and his first thought is _asthma attack,_ but he knows that’s not what’s going on. He’s known that for a long time. This is a panic attack, and if the numb sensation in his hands is anything to go by, it’s about to be a doozy. 

He drops the tweezers onto the edge of the sink and hunches over, clutching his kneecaps and trying to calm the fuck down. Eddie gets panic attacks often, he’s a pro at riding them out. As a kid he’d just huff on his inhaler full of camphor water, using the goddamn thing entirely wrong if it’d been real, and when he was married — well, when he was married, Myra would usually make things worse. She’d fuss and panic herself, asking Eddie if he was having a heart attack, which only made Eddie freak out about _that_ on top of whatever had initially set him off.

Thinking about his fake asthma and his sham marriage is not helping Eddie calm down. Nothing is calming him down, because the only sounds around him besides his own ragged hyperventilating are the noises of the forest, still unfamiliar enough to be alien and disconcerting at the moment. He needs something familiar, something _normal,_ something — 

His eyes fall on the walkie, sitting in the docking station. If he can get Richie talking to him, maybe hearing another, non-panicky human voice will be enough to get him out of his own head. He just has to pull it together enough to prompt Richie into a monologue. If the past couple days are anything to go by, it won’t be hard to do. 

Eddie grabs the radio and sits down on the floor, his heart banging against the walls of his chest. Shakily, he presses the button and says, “Richie?” in a voice that only slightly trembles.

_“Hey Eddie! How’s it going, what’s up?”_

All he has to do is ask a question, say something random and brief that’ll get Richie talking. He presses down the button to talk and all that comes out is a few pained, panicked wheezes. He lets go of the button quickly, but it’s too late, the damage is done. Eddie feels like he might legitimately black out. 

Richie sounds concerned when he speaks again. _“Eddie? Are you okay over there? You didn’t fall off a cliff or something, did you?”_

Eddie chokes out a noise that’s almost a laugh. He pulls his knees up so he can rest his forehead on them, gasping breaths into the humid, dark space he’s made with his own body. Despite the heat outside and the sweat dripping from his forehead, he keeps getting chills. He holds the walkie loosely in one hand. He doesn’t know what the fuck to say.

_“Uh, Eddie, I’m gonna need you to say something so I know you didn’t get hurt, bud.”_

Fuck it. “Panic attack,” Eddie manages. He wants to fling the radio across the room. He wants to lie down on the floor of the tower and die. Everything feels so bad and so intense, why did he think he could do this? Why did he think he could stay in the middle of the fucking woods all by himself and not have a complete fucking meltdown? 

_“Oh, shit,”_ Richie says, snapping Eddie out of his thoughts. _“Hey, it’s okay, Eds, it happens. Okay, when I get panic attacks there are these breathing exercises I do, maybe I can help you through it. I’m — I’m just gonna do that and if you hate it you can turn your walkie off and do your own thing, okay? No pressure.”_ He waits a couple seconds, and then takes a very loud, exaggerated deep breath in, holds it for a few seconds, and then lets it out again. _“Just like that, okay, Eds?”_

Eddie sets the walkie on the floor next to him and shifts so he can prop his head in his hands instead of curling in on himself. He closes his eyes and listens to the staticky sound of Richie’s breathing. He must be breathing so stupidly loud for it to pick up like this over the radio, and it makes the corner of Eddie’s mouth twitch up into a smile. He tries to match Richie’s breath, distracted now by the mental image of Richie mouth-breathing into the walkie across the forest. He’s so fucking weird. 

After a few minutes, Richie speaks. _“How we feelin’, Eddie?”_

He’s calmed down enough that he can feel his hands again, and his heart no longer feels like it’s trying to beat right out of his chest. An intense wave of humiliation crashes over him, though, that he’s already broken down and now Richie knows just how much he doesn’t have his shit together. He picks up the walkie. “I’m okay.”

 _“Good!”_ Richie says brightly. _“Hey, that’s great.”_

Eddie winces. “Yeah, um. Yeah. I’m fine now.” 

Richie clears his throat. Sounding slightly awkward, he says, _“Do you, uh, do you wanna talk about it, it or…?”_

Eddie turns off the radio before Richie can finish the thought. Then he puts his face in his hands again and lets out a brief, frustrated scream.

He keeps the radio off for most of the day, which is probably against protocol and definitely only going to make things more awkward when he eventually has to turn it back on again, but he just _can’t_ deal with hearing Richie uncomfortably trying to coddle him. God forbid he finds out Eddie had a panic attack over a _splinter._ He’d probably call the forest service to airlift Eddie out of there immediately. And despite his meltdown, that’s not what Eddie wants. He’s as stubborn as he is anything else, and he’s decided he’s going to stay, so he’s fucking _staying._

Around sundown, Eddie notices light flickering from the north window. He walks over to it, frowning, and sees that the lights in the Thorofare Tower are flicking on and off. At first he wonders if Richie’s tower is having some sort of generator malfunction, but then he realizes the flickers seem to be following a pattern. 

One of the recommended skills for the lookout job was the ability to use Morse code, and Eddie spent the weeks leading up to the job teaching himself to recognize the alphabet in dots and dashes. As he watches Richie’s lights, he’s finally able to decipher them: _R A D I O._

Sighing heavily, Eddie turns on his walkie again and speaks into it. “Alright, alright, you got me.”

The lights abruptly stop flickering. _“Eddie! What the hell, man, you can’t have your radio off all day!”_

“I know!” Eddie shouts back. Why is he shouting? Something about Richie really just makes Eddie want to yell everything he says. “I know, okay, fuck. I’m sorry.”

_“It’s fine, just, uh, don’t do it again. What were you even doing?”_

“Meditating,” Eddie lies. He spent a good portion of the day lying facedown on his bed, to be honest, but he’s not about to say that.

_“Uh-huh. So are you… good?”_

“I’m _fine,_ I promise it won’t happen again.”

_“The radio thing or the panic attack?”_

Eddie cringes. “Dude, I can’t promise no more panic attacks, I don’t know what the fuck my brain’s gonna do.”

 _“That was a joke,”_ Richie says. _“Did you miss the part where I said I get them, too? It’s all good. I get stir-crazy as fuck out here sometimes, it’s easy to get way too into your own head about random shit. You don’t have to worry though, okay? Just keep your radio on, let me know if you ever need anything. You’re safe out here and I’ve got your back.”_

Eddie feels his face growing warm. “Uh, thank you? Really, thanks, I… I appreciate that.”

_“That’s my job, Eduardo. Gotta make you feel appreciated.”_

Deflecting from whatever the hell that means or why it makes Eddie’s face get even warmer, he says, “Well I’d feel more appreciated if we could talk about literally anything else. Tell me something while I make dinner.” 

_“Sure thing, Eds, I can describe to you — in great detail, of course — all the trees I looked at today while you were ignoring me. The first one was green, lots of leaves. The second one, you’ll never believe it,_ also _green. Regretting this yet?”_ He sounds incredibly amused with himself.

“Yes,” Eddie says, not regretting it at all.

**DAY 14**

It takes Eddie two weeks before he gets stir-crazy enough that his itch to move around outweighs his trepidation about all the unknown variables in the forest. “I think I’m gonna go for a hike,” he tells Richie, retrieving sunblock and bug spray from his bag.

 _“Aw, the baby bird finally leaves the nest,”_ Richie coos.

“Don’t call me a fuckin’ baby,” Eddie says without much heat. He uncaps the sunblock and pours a generous amount in one hand, slathering his arms and neck. 

_“For real though, man, good for you. Your sector’s gorgeous, you got Jonesy Lake over to the west if you’re in the mood for a swim. Just don’t get lost.”_

Eddie huffs, smearing excess sunblock on his thigh and grabbing the walkie again. “First of all, I would never swim in a lake, standing water is full of parasites and microorganisms and shit. And second of all, I never get lost. I have a very good internal sense of direction.”

 _“And a compass and a map,”_ Richie says.

“And a compass and a map,” Eddie agrees reluctantly. “But mostly it’s just instinct.” The one instinct he allows himself to trust, because it’s never let him down. 

He finishes smothering himself in sunblock and bug spray, and then grabs a baseball cap from his bag and tugs it over his head before shouldering his pack and heading outside into the bright late-morning light. 

_“Sun’s out, buns out, huh?”_ Richie says.

Eddie stares at the walkie, nonplussed, and then whips around to squint in the direction of Richie’s tower. “What?”

 _“Have your legs_ ever _seen sunlight before? You could use those babies as signal beacons if you ever get lost out here, they’re so bright.”_

“I — I work in an office!” Eddie exclaims. “I’m usually wearing business slacks!” 

_“I’m just saying, man, lotta leg showing over there. Lot. O’. Leg.”_

“Are you this insufferable to all the lookouts?” Eddie asks, stalking down the stairs of the tower.

Richie chuckles. _“Nah, just you.”_

Eddie feels vaguely pleased by that, and then stomps right down on that feeling, because, _what the fuck._ “How come you can see me but I can never see you?” 

_“I have the high ground,”_ Richie says, in some vaguely posh accent. 

Eddie frowns for a moment, trying to place it, then says, “Is that fucking Star Wars?”

_“Oh thank god, you had me worried for a second there that you were uncultured.”_

Eddie heads for the trail he took up to the tower his first night here, and follows the branching path off to the west. It’s early enough in the day that it’s not too hot yet. The tall grass is yellowed from the drought and the heat, and the dirt path is firm and baked like clay under his boots. He’s growing used to the sound of the wind through the trees, the hum of beetles and birds chattering away. He still misses the sounds of traffic and the general bustle of a city, but at least he’s sleeping through the night now.

Richie chimes in again as Eddie goes further down the trail, where the trees are thick enough to make some real shade and he has to hop over a fallen log. _“So, you’re from New York, right? What do you do up there besides wear ‘business pants’?”_

Eddie snorts a laugh before responding. “I work in risk analysis, and I’m not even going to bother trying to explain that to you because you won’t understand it.”

 _“Well that’s fucking presumptuous!”_ Richie exclaims. _“Tell me, man, how dare you.”_

He knows he’s being set up for something, but he really can’t help himself when Richie goads him. “Okay, well, I work for an insurance firm, and I basically review their investments and predict asset losses or rewards, and give my recommendations — I’m sure you’re riveted right now.” 

Richie is making loud, exaggerated snores on the other end when Eddie releases the “talk” button. _“So sorry, I fell asleep after you said the word ‘insurance.’ Was this job invented before fun?”_

“Jobs aren’t supposed to be fun, they’re supposed to be, like, fulfilling,” Eddie says, pushing a low-hanging branch out of his way.

 _“Oh, excuse me. Does risk analysis_ fulfill _you, Eddie?”_

Eddie opens his mouth to spit out the automatic “of course” that he’s trained himself to say, but then he stops and really thinks about it, and finds to his great discomfort that he doesn’t actually know. He hasn’t made enough of his own unsupervised life choices until now to know what he finds fulfilling. “It doesn’t matter,” he says finally. “It’s a job, I’m good at it, and I make good money.”

Richie hums. _“I didn’t know insurance firms had summer breaks.”_

“Oh, no, I’m just taking an — ah, _extended vacation,_ I think was what my boss called it.” He laughs ruefully. “With the amount of unused PTO I’ve racked up over the past decade, they really couldn’t say no.” When Richie doesn’t respond right away, Eddie gets self-conscious and adds, “So what do you do?”

_“I’ll tell you if you promise to laugh.”_

“I — wait, you _want_ me to laugh?” 

_“Well yeah, that’s my main goal as a comedian, Eds.”_

Eddie stops dead in his tracks. “You’re a comedian? Oh my _god.”_

_“Ha! Not a fan of standup?”_

“Not really,” Eddie admits.

_“So you probably haven’t heard of me then, huh. Trashmouth Tozier?”_

“Trashmouth? Well that makes sense. I don’t know about funny but you’re definitely trashy.” 

_“Oh, fucking ZING!”_ Richie cackles. He always keeps the button held down while he laughs — usually at his own jokes — so that Eddie can hear it. Eddie tries to do the opposite, not wanting to give Richie the satisfaction, but he has a suspicion Richie knows anyway. 

“How long have you been doing that, then?” Eddie asks, cutting off Richie’s snickering.

_“Five years, just about. I’ve got a special with Comedy Central in the works for December.”_

“Wow, you’re big-time.”

_“Yeah yeah, don’t sound too impressed.”_

The trees continue more densely the further down the path Eddie goes, until he comes upon a little clearing with a large, flat stone off to one side like an altar for the forest. He is reminded, suddenly, of church — or rather, what he’s always been told church should feel like. When he was a kid, his mother took him to a small church in their hometown every Sunday, and he always found the dim lighting and muted carpet to be vaguely foreboding. Myra had also dragged him along to church most Sundays, one of those big modern churches with enormous stained glass windows and vaulted ceilings. Eddie felt unsettled and out of place there, too. He never felt particularly close to God, whatever that meant, when he was hustled into a pew against his will. Honestly, he just finds churches creepy.

When his dad had taken him camping as a child, he’d told Eddie that the forest was like a church, that he felt at his most spiritual when he was sitting in a tent under the stars. Eddie isn’t feeling _spiritual,_ per se, but he’s feeling _something_ right now. Awe, maybe. A loosening in the center of his chest. 

“Hey, are you religious?” he asks Richie.

After a pause, Richie says, _“Uh, no? I mean, my dad’s Jewish, but we don’t really practice. I definitely don’t. Why, you having some kinda come-to-Jesus moment?”_

“No, shut up,” Eddie scoffs. “I was just thinking about something my dad said to me, I don’t know. It’s really beautiful out here.” He cuts off the path and heads for the large rock, hoisting himself up onto it so he can sit cross-legged. The sun spills a dappled pattern of light across the forest floor through the leaves. For the first time in two weeks, Eddie doesn’t miss the city at all. 

_“Whatcha doing now?”_ Richie asks. _“Meditating again?”_

Eddie huffs out a laugh. “Just enjoying the quiet.”

_“Oh, my bad.”_

“No, it’s fine. I don’t mind when you talk. It’s nice,” Eddie says, a bit surprised to find he really means it.

And if he didn’t know any better, Eddie would say that Richie sounds flustered when he responds. _“…Oh. Thanks, Eddie.”_

* * *

**_July_ **

**DAY 28**

_“Y’know what a day like this makes me wanna do?”_ Richie asks on the Fourth of July.

Eddie is sitting at his desk in the lookout tower, the heat leaching in through the windows as the sun beats down overhead. He’s got a half-eaten sandwich on a tin plate in front of him, and a detective novel he bought at JFK before his flight to Wyoming propped up on his knee. Eddie scoops up the walkie and presses the button. “Climb inside an icebox?” he guesses.

_“No, man. Ride my fuckin’ bike.”_

“In this heat? You’re nuts.”

 _“It reminds me of summers when I was a kid,”_ Richie says. _“Me and a couple of friends back in middle school, we’d spend all summer outside riding our bikes all over the place. No one knew where the fuck we were, it was great. We’d go down to this quarry to swim, and the water was all warm like a bath. You woulda hated it, full of microbes or whatever the fuck you’re always going on about.”_

Eddie dog-ears the page in his book and tosses it onto the desk. “Yeah, no thanks. And you can laugh all you want, but the parasites in standing water thing is legit. Google it when we get out of here, I’m telling you.” 

_“Alright, alright, excuse the hell outta me for doubting your infinite wisdom,”_ Richie says, sounding amused. _“Hey, do you think we would’ve been friends when we were kids? Were you this tightly wound in your youth?”_

Eddie snorts. “Fuck you, man. I dunno, if _you_ were anything like you are now I probably would’ve liked you. I doubt my mom would’ve let me do any of the shit you and your friends did, though.” 

_“Uh-oh. Helicopter parent situation?”_

“That’s one way of putting it, I guess,” Eddie says. “My dad died of cancer when I was young, and it really fucked my mom up. I don’t know, she was probably always sort of anxious, but after he died she got really overprotective of me.” He hates that even now he’s trying to soften his description, to protect his mother from judgement. It’s still so hard to admit the truth of it. “I wasn’t really allowed to go out with friends very much. Especially not after I broke my arm when I was thirteen.”

_“Oh shit! How’d that happen?”_

“Fell out of a tree,” Eddie says. “Me and my friend were playing around in his backyard and honestly, I don’t even know why I climbed the fucking thing. My mom was always going on about how dangerous it was, and I never wanted to get hurt because I knew she’d flip her lid. But I did it, and I fell, and my arm — the radius fully _snapped,_ it was a really bad break. I came home crying and my mom just. Lost it. She didn’t let me outside for the rest of the summer.”

_“She — what, literally? But you need like, vitamin D and shit, didn’t she know that?”_

“She knew. She, uh, she had me sit in front of an open window for twenty minutes once a week.” 

The silence between them is nearly unbearable, but Eddie lets it sit. He has the word for it now, what he didn’t recognize in childhood and took so long to admit as an adult: abuse. It makes him jittery to know Richie’s putting the pieces together, but this is easier to confess, somehow, than that his wife was so much the same. Eddie props his elbows up on the desk so he can rest his face in his hands and just breathe. 

_“Jesus, Eddie, I’m sorry,”_ Richie says finally. _“That’s, uh, that’s really shitty.”_

“Yeah.” Eddie swallows roughly after he speaks. He hasn’t even told Richie about the fake medicine, the placebo inhaler. Maybe he will, eventually. This is enough of an admission for now. 

_“I’ve never broken a bone,”_ Richie says after another pause. _“Broke my nose twice though.”_

“Twice?!” Eddie exclaims. “What the fuck happened?”

 _“First time I tripped while ice skating as a teenager. Second time I got punched. And not for any kind of glamorous reason, either,”_ Richie says.

“Right, all the glamorous reasons one could get punched for.”

 _“I just mean I wasn’t in like a fight or something. Someone just, uh — had a problem with what I — with me. So they punched me.”_ Richie laughs humorlessly, a nervous habit, and Eddie’s stomach turns to ice. He thinks he might know what Richie’s getting at, and the thought of it tightens like a vice on Eddie’s lungs. He gets now why Richie was quiet for so long after Eddie’s half-confession. What do you even say to something like that? 

It seems Richie can’t sit with the silence as well as Eddie can, because he adds, _“But don’t you worry, Eds, it only adds to my roguish good looks.”_

Eddie laughs, and he even holds down the button so Richie can hear it. There’s a fluttery feeling in his gut, half-relieved that Richie’s absolving him of the need to respond, even though he feels shitty for not saying anything. Then he says, “You want to know something fucked up? When I was climbing that tree, the whole time — I think part of me wanted to fall.”

Richie makes a considering hum. _“I think I get that,”_ he says.

They don’t say anything else for nearly half an hour, but this silence is comfortable; like they’re sitting in the same room, quietly observing the sun-baked forest in the summer heat.

**DAY 34**

The days following Fourth of July are scorching and dry, and Richie makes a joking comment about fireworks as Eddie stomps through the itchy dead grass on his way back from the outhouse. 

“You want fireworks, I’ll flicker my lights when it gets dark and you can pretend,” Eddie says, after he’s scrubbed his hands clean in the sink. 

_“My first summer here some idiots brought in fireworks and started launching them off in the middle of the afternoon,”_ Richie says. _“I had to go down to their camp and confiscate their stash, I was scared shitless.”_

“Oh god, were they like big dudes or something?”

_“Even worse. Teenagers.”_

Eddie laughs. “The horror!”

_“You’re telling me! It was a total nightmare. And it wasn’t even the fourth or anything, they were just really drunk.”_

Eddie sits down at his desk chair again, pulling off his baseball cap and tossing it in the direction of the bed. He overshoots and it ends up falling off the other side, between the bed and the wall. Sighing, Eddie stands up and crawls onto the bed to retrieve it, wedging his arm into the gap. His fingers brush the cap, and then he feels the corner of a cardboard box, tucked into the back corner beneath the bed. Frowning, he slides off the bed and gets on his hands and knees, reaching over to pull the box out. 

It’s a banker’s box without a lid, and sitting inside is an old-school boombox and a small collection of cassettes. They’re dusty from disuse. Eddie picks up one of the cassettes — Blondie’s _Autoamerican_ album. Eddie pulls out his walkie. “Hey, I just found a box full of tapes and a boombox?”

_“Oh shit! Yeah, that belonged to the lookout in your tower from last summer, she must’ve left it behind. I think she was pretty eager to get out of here last August.”_

“Why, did you annoy her to death?” Eddie asks. He takes the boombox out and presses the power button. Surprisingly, the batteries are still good, because the little light comes on. 

_“Ha-ha. No, she just — she came out here to figure some things out about her life, you know? And then she did.”_

Eddie mulls that over. He selects one of the cassettes, a Stevie Nicks album that’s worn from so much use. He sticks it in the tape deck and presses down on the rewind button. “You said people come here to get away from something.”

 _“Yeah. Bev — that’s her name — she had some shit going on back home. Her husband was a real scumbag. He’d hit her, push her around. I guess it’s not really fair to say people come here to run from shit, because she wasn’t running away. I think she came here to find something.”_ Richie sounds unusually earnest, almost proud, as he talks about Bev. The tape deck clicks, signaling that the tape is done rewinding. Eddie hesitates with his finger on the play button. He pulls his hand away. 

“What about you, Rich?” he asks.

 _“What about me?”_ Richie says, confused.

“You’ve been here four summers. What’re you trying to find out here?” It’s probably too personal a question, especially given the fact that Richie already essentially deflected it on Eddie’s first night here, but he’s really started to lose his filter when it comes to Richie. The questions and the jokes and swearing, it all just tumbles out of him in a fit of shared unprofessionalism. 

Richie laughs uncomfortably. _“Man, I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I keep coming back. I’ll let you know if I ever figure it out.”_ He clears his throat. _“You ever gonna tell me why you’re here, Eds?”_

Eddie scrubs a hand over his face. “Maybe some other time,” he says. “Right now I’ve got cassettes to listen to.”

 _“Are you having a dance party? Without me?”_ Richie asks, slipping back into his usual affable tone like it’s as easy as slipping into a coat. Eddie envies him.

“You do _not_ want to see me dance,” he says. “And I don’t think I want to see you dance, either.”

 _“I get no respect around here,”_ Richie complains. Eddie presses play on the boombox, and Stevie Nicks’ “I Can’t Wait” starts to play. Eddie holds his walkie up to the speaker so Richie can hear it.

**DAY 41**

“Some other time” comes only a week after Eddie finds the boombox. He’s outside, lifting his hand to shade his eyes, when he notices that the pale strip of skin where his wedding ring used to sit has tanned with the rest of him over the past few weeks — it’s hardly visible now. He lowers his hand, flexing his fingers to look at it. Tears sting behind his eyes. He’s not sad, he’s just… he doesn’t know what he’s feeling. Relief, maybe? One final weight, lifted from his shoulders. The last remnant of the lie he’d built around himself is gone.

He moves to sit at the bottom of the stairs to the tower, where he knows Richie can’t see him. Then he pulls the walkie from his belt.

“I got divorced,” he says without preamble. “That’s why — you asked why I was here, the first night. What I’m running away from or whatever, and that’s it.”

 _“Oh,”_ Richie says. _“I’m sorry, Eddie. Wait, is this an ‘I’m sorry’ situation or a ‘congrats’ situation?”_

“Well, she was exactly like my mother, our entire relationship was toxic, and I’m gay, so. You tell me,” Eddie says. He closes his eyes, bracing himself for however Richie will react. He’s only told two other people that he’s gay: Myra, and his lawyer.

There’s a silence, but he can hear Richie breathing, which means he’s holding down the button on his radio. _“Jeez, Eds, when they asked you for a reason for the divorce you just went with every possible option, huh?”_ He makes a frustrated noise. _“Fuck, sorry, that was a dick thing to say. I’m bad at this shit. When you… Eddie. When you say she was like your mom, do you mean…?”_ He trails off, letting Eddie fill in the blanks with the word neither one of them seems to want to say aloud. 

“Yeah,” he whispers, because it’s easier to talk around it. Then he just keeps going, because he hasn’t had anyone to tell about this for so many months. “We were together five years. I asked for the divorce in December, but I’d been wanting it for a lot longer than that. I was just scared to take the first step. And I think… I really think I didn’t feel like I was actually free of it all until right now. I don’t know.” In a way, Eddie’s almost glad that this is the part of his confession that Richie’s decided to latch onto, because talking about his sexuality is still frightening a lot of the time. But on the other hand — Eddie _knows_ he’s not the only one feeling something between the two of them, simmering below the surface in the parched heat of the summer. He was expecting Richie to… react more, maybe. 

_“I’m proud of you, Eds,”_ Richie says. _“That’s not an easy situation to get out of. Shit.”_ He clears his throat, and then: _“Listen, I kinda lied to you the other day. When I said I didn’t know why I was still coming here.”_

“You don’t have to tell me just because I told you,” Eddie says. “You don’t owe me an explanation, Rich.”

_“Ah, what the hell. You probably figured it out already anyway. I’m gay.”_

Eddie runs a hand over the back of his neck, wiping away perspiration. “Okay,” he says.

 _“And it — no one knows about it, not my friends or my agent or my parents, no one. I keep coming out here thinking maybe I’ll go back to the real world feeling, like,_ ready. _Whatever the hell that means.”_ He laughs hollowly. _“Jesus, I’m halfway through my thirties. I don’t want to still be a fucking closet case by the time I’m forty. I just keep going back to LA and it’s like nothing changes. In my head, I mean. Are you out?”_

“Fuck no,” Eddie says. “I was married to a woman until, like, two months ago, Richie.”

_“Right. Sorry, stupid question.”_

“Did you tell Bev? The lookout from last year?”

_“No. I should have. I wanted to. I don’t know why I didn’t.”_

“You’re only the third person I’ve told,” Eddie says. “It’s not easy, man. But I’m glad you told me.”

_“Yeah, well. You’re — you’re you. It’s different with you.”_

Eddie feels his face growing even hotter than he already is, sitting outside in the sun, and he rubs his hand over his cheek like he can make the blush go away. Richie doesn’t elaborate, but he doesn’t need to. Eddie knows.

**DAY 50**

Eddie wakes up in the middle of a night in late July to the sound of his radio going off, Richie’s voice sing-song as he says, _“Eddieee, wake uuuup!”_

Groaning, Eddie sits up, squinting around in the dark, and his eyes fall on the south window — and the orange-yellow flames eating up the trees in the distance. “Oh, fuck,” he says, stumbling out of bed. He flicks on his lights on the way, grabbing his walkie off the dock. “I’m up, I’m up,” he says into it.

 _“You’ve got a front-row seat to what’s looking to be our biggest fire of the summer,”_ Richie says. He doesn’t sound too concerned, which makes Eddie’s lungs unclench just a little bit. _“It’s okay, I already called it in. They’ll probably send in a hotshot crew for suppression, but I’m guessing we’ll be stuck with her the rest of the summer.”_

“Really? Is that safe?” Eddie asks. The fire is mesmerizing from this distance, great plumes of black smoke coming off the top and blending into the night sky, while the flames move in a shuddering mass of warm light. When he got here at the beginning of the summer, he never could have accurately imagined what this is like.

 _“Fires happen sometimes, Eds,”_ Richie says. _“As long as it doesn’t get out of control, the forest service will handle it and we can just chill here. Don’t worry.”_ He sighs, a sound that crackles like a flame over the line. _“It’s kinda pretty, don’t you think? The way it looks at night.”_

Eddie pushes open the door to his tower and steps out onto the walkway, leaning against the railing. It _is_ beautiful, in a terrifying sort of way. Eddie props his elbows up on the guardrail and watches for a moment. “Yeah,” he says quietly into the radio.

For a short while, there’s just the distant crackle of the fire eating away at the trees, and the crickets chirping all over the forest. Eddie feels drowsy, but not on the verge of falling back asleep yet. He stands sock-footed on the walkway and just breathes. 

Richie’s voice comes in again. _“Y’know, I actually woke you up because — usually I get to name them, the fires. But I thought you’d wanna do the honors this time.”_

“How about the Tozier Fire?” Eddie says, half-joking.

Richie laughs, his stupid silly giggle. _“You callin’ me hot, Kaspbrak?”_

“I was thinking more… overwhelming,” Eddie says, although maybe they mean the same thing in this case. 

_“Gee, thanks. Fine, the Tozier Fire it is.”_

Eddie’s noticing now that Richie’s voice sounds looser, slightly slurred. “Have you been drinking?” he asks.

 _“Whoops, ya caught me,”_ Richie says. _“I just had a beer. I’d offer to share, but you’re a little far away.”_ There’s a wistful edge to his words, and Eddie’s fingers tighten momentarily on the guardrail. He steps back and sits down, leaning against the wall of the tower. 

_“You still looking at the fire?”_

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He bends his leg so he can rest his head on his knee. 

The radio statics, indicating that Richie’s holding down the button to speak, but for a few seconds he’s quiet. Then he says, _“I’m really glad you’re here. I don’t — I don’t talk to the other lookouts the way I talk with you. You know that, right?”_

Eddie swallows against the sudden ache in his throat. Richie sounds painfully sincere. “Yeah, I know. I’m glad I’m here, too.” 

_“I wish I was over there,”_ Richie says. 

Eddie closes his eyes. The Tozier Fire leaves an impression behind his eyelids. “Me too.”

 _“We could sit outside and watch the fire,”_ Richie says. _“We could talk without these fuckin’ radios. We could…”_ He trails off, a slight hitch to his voice. Eddie’s eyes open again, and he waits, but Richie doesn’t continue.

“What could we do?” he asks, breathless. His heart is beating hard, and sweat is gathering under his arms, in the hollow of his throat. It’s so goddamn hot outside, even at night. His skin prickles with something electric. 

_“Eddie…”_ Richie’s voice is husky in a way that shoots right down to Eddie’s thighs. He digs his chin hard into his knee and stares at the fire devouring the trees. _“If I was there right now… would you let me kiss you?”_

Eddie’s lips part, and he huffs out a breath. He imagines it, bringing his hand to his mouth and pressing his thumb against his bottom lip, trying to picture Richie’s lips and tongue. He doesn’t even know what Richie looks like, but the suggestion turns his insides molten with want. There’s the _real_ Tozier Fire, burning up his stomach and heart and lungs, making blood rush hotly to redden his cheeks while the rest of it goes south. He realizes, belatedly, that he still has to answer.

He pushes the button and says, in a voice that he barely recognizes as his own, “Richie, I’d let you do a hell of a lot more than that.” 

* * *

**_August_ **

**DAY 57**

“I still think it’s bullshit you get your shit delivered right to your door and I have to fuckin’ trek up the side of a mountain for mine,” Eddie gripes, wiping sweat from his brow and nudging up the brim of his hat as he squints at the signpost telling him he’s headed toward _Thorofare Basin Region | Supply Drop._ It’s not really that strenuous of a hike, especially not after all the weeks Eddie’s been out here wandering around in the forest. But Richie seems to find Eddie’s griping deliciously funny, and Eddie’s taking what he can get at this point. Because they’re not — they still haven’t _talked about it._

It’s been a full week since Eddie sat on the walkway of his tower and stared at the fire and engaged in phone sex — walkie sex? — for the first time in his life. And now they’re just very loudly avoiding the subject at every turn, and as each day passes Eddie becomes more unsure of whose court the ball is in at this point. Richie started things, but Eddie _definitely_ contributed. They should talk about it. Eddie’s dying to talk about it.

He’s just not going to bring it up first. 

_“Them’s the breaks, Eds Spagheds,”_ Richie is saying, as Eddie crests the hill and finds the supply drop box waiting for him. Beyond that, the ravine stretches out, the forest continuing on the other side. Eddie can see Richie’s tower in the distance. _“You excited for all the goodies in there? Baked beans and prunes for_ days, _dude.”_

“It’s like they want us to shit as much as possible,” Eddie says, his mouth twitching into a grin as Richie cracks up on the other end. “Okay, I’m here.”

 _“Your box’ll be labeled with Two Forks Tower,”_ Richie says. _“Don’t take anyone else’s shit.”_

“Why the fuck would I do that?” Eddie asks, offended.

 _“Maybe you’re just an absolute fiend for prunes, Eddie, I don’t know,”_ Richie says. Eddie can hear the smirk in his voice. 

Instead of unlocking the cache box, Eddie’s distracted by a length of cable that spans one edge of the ravine to the other. He walks over to it, frowning. There’s a little platform that the cable extends from, a sort of pulley system going along to the other side. A tiny open car sits on the opposite side.

“What’s this thing across the ravine?” he asks into the radio.

 _“Oh, that’s the, uh, the cable car. To my neck of the woods,”_ Richie says. There’s a practiced casualness to the way he says it, and Eddie bites on the inside of his cheek.

“Well, shit, maybe I’ll hike over,” he says, copying Richie’s tone. 

_“It’s locked up right now,”_ Richie says quickly. _“And, uh, mainly for emergencies. Sorry, Eds.”_

Eddie closes his eyes, feeling stupid and rejected. “What if I told you there was a bear standing here right now?” he asks.

Richie huffs a laugh. _“I’d say start running.”_

Eddie swallows, tapping the walkie to his forehead a couple times in frustration before stepping down from the platform and turning his back on the cable car. “Alright, I get it. I can take a hint.”

Richie doesn’t say anything for a moment. Eddie walks back over to the cache box and opens the lock. His box of supplies sits in the center compartment, _TWO FORKS_ scrawled across the top. Then, Richie says, _“Eddie… listen, I want to. Just. Not yet. At the end of the summer, if you want, we can meet up. And, and get a beer, or coffee, or whatever you’re into. I’ll — I’ll take you to fuckin’ dinner.”_

Eddie’s heart feels too big for his ribcage, and he can feel his pulse in his own throat. “At the end of the summer, huh?”

 _“Yes,”_ Richie says. _“I promise, okay? If you still want to by the end of this… I promise.”_

 _Oh,_ Eddie thinks abruptly, _Richie’s scared._ And Eddie gets it. Isn’t he scared, too? Isn’t that why he hasn’t said anything all week, either? The Tozier Fire continues to eat away at the forest, and the _other_ Tozier Fire continues to eat away at Eddie’s insides, all-consuming. It’s terrifying to think that when they leave the forest, whatever has sparked between them will stay behind, tucked among the trees. Eddie wants to take this with him when he goes back to whatever his life is now. 

He’s quiet as he packs his supply box into his backpack and slings it over his shoulders, making his way back down south to his tower. After several minutes, he says into the radio, “You said you started coming here after your first year doing standup, right?”

 _“Yeah,”_ Richie says. _“That first year was, uh, it was a lot. This was a pretty good place to escape.”_

“Do you not like doing comedy?” Eddie asks. A bird flies overhead, and even its motions look sluggish in the heat. 

_“Oh, no, it’s not that. I love that shit. It’s just — it’s like, a persona, you know? Everyone has one in Hollywood, all the fake bullshit. I don’t have to deal with any of that crap up here.”_ He blows a raspberry, buzzing over the speaker. _“You know the lookout from last year that I told you about, Bev? She’s Beverly Marsh, the designer. You heard of her?”_

Eddie’s definitely heard of her — he has six shirts from Rogan + Marsh in his closet. “You’re telling me I’ve been listening to _Beverly fuckin’ Marsh’s_ cassettes?”

Richie snorts. _“Yup. So I’m guessing you heard about her divorce last year.”_

And yes, Eddie heard about that too. He remembers Myra _tsking_ under her breath as she pored over the gossip columns, saying what a shame it all was, that some people just couldn’t put in the _work_ to keep a marriage together. Eddie, who was six months away from working up the nerve to ask for a divorce himself, looked at the headline _BEVERLY MARSH COMES CLEAN ABOUT ROGAN’S ABUSE_ and felt something slither into his stomach, inky and miserable. 

“Yeah,” he says to Richie now, blinking sweat from his eyes. “Yeah, I heard about that.”

 _“Well, I don’t know dick about fashion, so I had no clue who she was when she came out here,”_ Richie says. _“And she had never watched my shit. It was great — we could just be regular fuckin’ people. She’s doing a lot better now, by the way. Dating some architect she knew from high school, he’s good to her.”_

“That’s good,” Eddie says. He’s trying to parse this all together, what he’s come to know about Richie and what he thinks he’s starting to understand. 

_“I like that you don’t know my standup,”_ Richie says. _“You don’t have any expectations about me. I’m not… not always proud of the shit I’ve said on stage, the person I am up there. You don’t know Hollywood Rich Tozier — fuck that guy. That guy sucks.”_

“Who are you right now, then?”

 _“Right now? Why, right now I’m Ol’ Shoshone Richie, my dear,”_ he says in an exaggerated Western drawl.

“I like Ol’ Shoshone Richie,” Eddie tells him seriously. “That’s not going to change when we leave. This is the real you, and I like this guy. I like him a lot.” 

Richie laughs, and it sounds shaky. _“Well, Ol’ Shoshone Richie likes Ol’ Shoshone Eddie a lot, too.”_

Eddie smiles, tipping his face back enough that the sun sneaks under the bill of his cap and spills hot and bright over his cheeks.

**DAY 65**

The Tozier Fire grows. Eddie’s whole sector of the forest is hazy with smoke, flecks of ash in the air. Richie says, _“They’ll probably airlift us out in a day or so if they can’t get it under control.”_

Eddie isn’t sleeping well, anxious about the smoke and the fire and the prospect of the airlift; of seeing Richie at the end of it. 

**DAY 66**

On August 11, 2010, the Tozier Fire has been burning for sixteen days and the forest service makes the call to evacuate all the lookouts in the area. The sky is a dirty yellow color from smoke pollution, and thick flakes of ash and cinder blow past the cracked-open windows of Eddie’s tower as he methodically packs his things. He can’t fit Bev’s boombox in his bag, but he does take most of the cassettes. The whir of a plane hums overhead, closer and then growing faint again.

 _“The service says the fire’s two percent contained at this point,”_ Richie tells him. _“They’re picking us up from my place. You’ll wanna head north up to where the supply drop is and then take the cable car. It’s unlocked now.”_

Eddie unlaces his boots and reties them. He looks around the room. He knows he has everything he needs in his pack — he has to go. It’s time to leave. He’s scared of the smoke and the hike up to Richie’s tower, but he’s more scared of what will happen on the other side of it all, when he’s back out in the real world, back to his life. He sighs and shuts off the lights. He puts on his backpack.

“I’m heading your way now,” he tells Richie, taking the stairs two at a time at a brisk pace. The air tastes acrid with smoke. He can hear the crackle of the fire to the south. 

_“Hey Eds? Be careful,”_ Richie says. 

“I will be.” It’s a ways off to Richie’s tower, but he knows how to get there. He has his map and compass just in case, but he remembers how to get to the cable car. The trail is easy to follow, even with the limited visibility. It’s not long before he can see the sign telling him he’s 0.2 miles from the supply drop. “Okay, I’m almost there.”

_“Wow. Guess I’ll be seeing you soon, huh?”_

Eddie’s heart shudders nervously. “Guess so.”

 _“Eddie, I — oh, shit. Hang on.”_ Over the radio, Eddie can hear the rhythmic _thump-thump-thump_ of helicopter blades. Richie’s voice is fainter, like he’s leaning away from the walkie’s mouthpiece. _“Hey, yeah — we’re waiting for one more. From Two Forks, no, yeah, he’s coming.”_ A pause, as Richie listens to someone speak. Eddie can’t hear over the sound of the helicopter. He keeps moving, grass crunching and snapping underfoot. He can see the cache box, just cresting the hill. _“Okay. One second,”_ Richie says, and then his voice becomes clearer again. _“Hey, so they’re here. They’re making rounds, they’re gonna come back. They want me to go with them now but I — I’m gonna stay here and wait for you, okay? And we’ll get on the next one together.”_

“Richie,” Eddie says, and then stops. He doesn’t want to take the flight back alone. He wants to see Richie. But he also doesn’t want Richie to stick around in a fucking burning forest any longer than he has to. Eddie’s lungs are starting to hurt, and not the phantom pain of anxiety or a childhood of being told he has asthma. This is the real deal, smoke inhalation pains. “Rich, you should go with them. Seriously, it’s not safe here and if something happened —”

_“Nothing’s gonna happen, Jesus Christ, Eds!”_

Eddie closes his eyes, his lips pressed together. Everything smells of burning, like this whole little haven he and Richie have carved out over the summer is crumbling apart. “Richie. Please, just… just get on the helicopter, okay? I’ll get on the next one and meet you at the trailhead. I promise, just wait for me there.”

Richie exhales shakily. _“Okay. If you’re really sure… okay.”_

“I’m really sure,” Eddie confirms. He reaches the top of the hill, and sees that the cable car is now on his side of the ravine, waiting for him. “You better still be there when I get down, though.”

 _“I’m not gonna ditch you,”_ Richie promises. _“Okay, fuck, I gotta go.”_

“Have a safe flight,” Eddie says. 

_“Have a safe hike.”_

The walkie goes quiet. Eddie gets into the cable car. The pulley system means he has to pull the cart across the length of the cable to get to the other side. As he goes, jaw clenched and sweat beading on his forehead, he sees the helicopter lift off in the distance. 

Eddie arrives at Richie’s tower several long minutes later. It’s rockier on this side of the forest, less shrubbery and scrub grass, more pebbled ground and big boulders. The stairway up to the Thorofare Tower is identical to the one at Two Forks, so Eddie heads up to wait inside. The door is unlocked, and he pushes in, taking in Richie’s space for the first time. 

In most ways, it’s the same as Eddie’s tower. The same bed, desk, and kitchenette setup. The same Shoshone flora poster on one wall, the map table in the center of the room. Richie’s left a few things behind that personalize it: a mostly empty tube of toothpaste inside the sink basin, an open bag of corn nuts on the desk, a ceramic mug with the dregs of what smells like hot cocoa at the bottom. There’s a blue T-shirt with the Just For Laughs 2009 festival logo across the front, draped over the back of Richie’s chair. By the looks of the stains on it, Richie’s been using it as a cleaning rag. 

Eddie has a brief, insane urge to press his face into Richie’s pillow and find his smell, but he decides that’s way too creepy and instead sits down at the desk to wait, staring out the window. There’s a big, fancier radio setup on this desk, since Richie’s tower is the central communication point. It has a headset and everything. Hesitantly, Eddie picks it up, sticking the headphones on snugly over his ears. He pulls down the mouthpiece and says, “Hello, anyone there?”

After a beat, Richie’s voice fills his ears, a bit clearer than he’s heard it before on the handheld radios. _“Hi, yeah, I’m here. Glad you made it okay.”_

“You down at the trailhead?”

_“Yep. I think I see your car. Do you drive an SUV?”_

“Uh, yeah, that’s mine.”

_“Tell me, was this a post-divorce crisis purchase or have you always driven a compensation car?”_

“Shut the fuck up!” Eddie yelps, incensed. Richie laughs, and Eddie’s heart squeezes in his chest. Richie’s deflecting because he’s nervous. Eddie’s not gonna let him. “What’s the situation down there?”

Richie blows out a breath. _“Uh, helicopter’s on its way back to you, should be there soon. There’s a debrief going on down here. Mike’s here and a bunch of forest service guys, firemen, the works. It’s just standard shit for the paperwork, it shouldn’t take long. Might even be done before you get down.”_

Eddie hums. “Okay. Good.”

_“So, while I’ve got you here… what are your big plans for the rest of the summer, Eds? Now that this all got cut short.”_

“Shit, I don’t know,” Eddie says. “I’m not going back to work until September first. What are you gonna do?”

 _“I’m sure my manager can throw some gigs together for me over the next few weeks,”_ Richie says, with an air of forced casualness. _“Back to the ol’ grind, I guess.”_

“Right.” Eddie drums his fingers nervously on the desktop. “Maybe, uh… maybe I can head to California, too. For a few weeks, until I have to go back to work. I’ve never been to LA.”

_“No shit? Well fuck yeah, dude, I’ll show you the sights!”_

“I’d like that. And I think you promised me dinner?”

Richie laughs, a burst of nervous static. _“Yeah, I did. You still wanna?”_

“I mean, yeah. If you do. I really want to, Richie.”

_“Me too. Okay, good. Yeah. Hey, listen, I got a ride in with one of the other rangers in June, do you think — maybe I could drive with you back into town? I need to get a hotel and like, book a fuckin’ flight home.”_

“Yeah, of course,” Eddie says. His skin tingles at the thought of a car ride with Richie — maybe sharing a hotel room. He’ll bring that up later. Outside, he can hear the helicopter making its return trip. “Hey, the helicopter’s back.”

_“Oh, okay. I’ll… see you down here in a bit, then.”_

“Okay.” Eddie’s heart is in his throat. His hands are shaking. “Bye, Richie.”

_“Bye, Eds.”_

The helicopter ride feels both agonizingly long and far too brief. Eddie spends most of it white-knuckling the arms of his seat and resolutely not looking out the windows. When they start their descent, Eddie’s stomach lurches. He breathes loudly through his mouth, grateful that the noise of the blades spinning drowns him out. They touch down, and one of the rangers pulls open the door so Eddie can get out. He steps down from the helicopter on shaky legs. The air is clear down here; he sees the packed, hard dirt where he parked his car more than two months ago, and the trailhead sign and bulletin board. It feels like a lifetime ago that he was here last.

The whole place is abuzz with people and vehicles — forest rangers, firemen, other lookouts — and Eddie becomes acutely aware of how grimy he is. His hair beneath his baseball cap has grown longer than he usually lets it get, and while he’s kept up a fairly routine shaving regimen he knows he’s a bit stubbly right now. He can feel a layer of sweat and ash plastered to the bare skin of his arms, neck, legs, and face. 

He’s also realizing how two-plus months away from all other people can make standing in a crowd an acutely stressful experience. He thanks the rangers in the helicopter and steps uncertainly away from it, not knowing what he’s supposed to do now. He _wants_ to find Richie, but he has no idea who he should be looking for. His ears strain in the chaos and the sound of the helicopter, trying to listen for Richie’s voice.

As he’s listening, a different but still vaguely familiar voice says, “Eddie Kaspbrak?” and he turns to face whoever’s talking to him. “Hi, I’m Mike Hanlon, we spoke on the phone before. Nice to meet you in person.”

Mike is tall, with a firm grip and a kind face. Eddie shakes his hand. “Good to meet you,” he says.

“I’m sorry to fly you out early, I hope this hasn’t totally turned you off to the idea of returning next summer,” Mike says.

“I’ll think about it,” Eddie says. He looks over at the trailhead. “Is everything going to be okay?”

“They’ll do what they can,” Mike says. He offers Eddie a slight smile. “Tozier took care of the debriefing, so you can head out at your leisure. I wouldn’t recommend sticking around too much longer, it’s going to be pretty chaotic for a while.” He pats Eddie on the shoulder and walks off to speak with someone else. 

Eddie, who felt his whole body light up when Mike mentioned Richie, renews his search in earnest, wandering slowly past the little pockets of people standing around. He stops abruptly when he hears a familiar cadence, though he can’t decipher the actual words yet. He spins on his heel and his eyes land on two people talking some ten feet from him. One of them is a forest ranger, and the other — well, the other must be Richie.

He’s tall, not quite as tall as Mike but still definitely taller than Eddie, with broad shoulders and shaggy, dark hair that’s messy and curling with sweat. He’s got on thick-rimmed tortoise-shell glasses, cargo shorts, and a grey t-shirt with dark rings of sweat at the armpits and collar. He’s talking animatedly, gesturing with his hands, and the ranger laughs. Eddie just watches, his breath caught. He eases his backpack off his shoulders and lets it fall to the ground next to his feet, a wave of panic stopping him from drawing attention to himself. What if Richie sees him and is disappointed?

Richie glances his direction, then does a double-take and looks again. “Eddie?” he mouths. Dumbly, Eddie nods and waves. Richie’s eyes go comically wide, and he makes some rushed excuse to the ranger before jogging over to where Eddie’s still rooted to the spot. “Eddie,” he says again, and hearing his voice without the walkies to muffle it makes Eddie’s pulse jump. 

“Hi Rich,” he says, smiling nervously. 

Richie gapes at him a little bit, and then his mouth slowly curls into an incredulous grin of his own. “You, uh — you get down alright?” he asks.

Eddie nods. “Yeah, it was fine. That was my first time in a helicopter, it was kinda cool.”

Richie laughs slightly. “Nice.” He swings his arms a little, then raises them hesitantly. “Do you do hugs? Can I hug you?” 

Eddie almost laughs at the question, even though it’s super reasonable and normally Eddie’s _not_ a very touchy person. It’s just — after everything, it feels stupid that they’re both being this awkward. Eddie nods again. “A hug would be nice,” he says, and then Richie pulls him into his arms for a brief, slightly stiff embrace. Eddie’s body tingles with the contact nonetheless. Richie’s arms are muscled and strong, one of his big hands spanning between Eddie’s shoulder blades. Eddie’s nose is pressed into the damp curve where Richie’s shoulder meets the side of his neck, and he smells like sweat and ash, but so does Eddie, so it’s fine.

Richie pulls back first, sticking his hands in the pockets of his shorts. Eddie takes in Richie’s face — his blue eyes, his unshaven face, his square jaw. The same layer of grime that covers Eddie, too. Eddie thinks he would’ve been into Richie regardless at this point, but the fact that Richie is absolutely his type is like a goddamn dream. He’s at least five inches taller than Eddie, which Eddie has already decided he’s going to pretend he hates even though it really makes his knees a little weak. 

Richie’s eyes are similarly roaming Eddie’s face. He looks happy, which eases some of Eddie’s worry about being a disappointment. 

Eddie nods in the direction of the ranger Richie was speaking to before. “I didn’t interrupt something important, did I?”

“Nah,” Richie says, looking back over his shoulder. “Turns out that guy’s a fan. He wanted my autograph. Fucking embarrassing.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” Eddie deadpans, and Richie beams at him in absolute delight. Eddie wonders if that’s the face he’s always made when Eddie teases him. It sends a thrill through him to finally see it happen. “I was just talking to Mike and he said we can go whenever. Do you need to wrap up anything else?”

Richie shakes his head. “No, I’m, uh, good to go if you are.” He glances around and they both become aware at the same time how close they’re still standing. “Lemme just grab my bag and I’ll… meet you at the car?”

“Okay,” Eddie says. He watches Richie walk away for a few seconds before he shakes himself into action and hurries over to his SUV. It’s dirty but looks relatively the same as when he left it. He unlocks the doors, retrieves his phone and plugs it into the car charger, and throws his backpack into the trunk. Richie comes up while Eddie’s digging around under the front seat for his first aid kit. 

“Should I throw my shit in the back?” Richie asks. 

Eddie startles a little and pokes his head out the open door. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

Richie puts his bag next to Eddie’s and then closes the trunk, shuffling around awkwardly before just getting into the passenger seat. Eddie retrieves the first aid kit at last and pulls out several sealed bags of wet wipes. He passes half of them to Richie before getting to work scrubbing as much of the grime from his hands and face as he can. He can feel Richie’s eyes on him, and when he glances over Richie is watching him with amusement.

“Quit smirking at me and wash your face,” Eddie says, ears reddening.

Richie sighs fondly and rips open one of the wet wipes for his hands. He has big hands, Eddie notices again. Thick, square-tipped fingers. Calluses and blunt nails. Eddie feels very warm, and he has to look away. He bunches up the used wet wipes and shoves them into the cupholder between the seats. When he looks at Richie again, he’s finished wiping off his face, but he’s left behind a streak of grey ash along the ridge of his cheek. 

“You missed a spot,” Eddie says. He leans over and plucks the wipe from Richie’s hand, scrubbing away the mark. 

Richie’s shallow breath hits the skin of Eddie’s wrist, prickling goosebumps up his arm. He flicks his gaze from Richie’s cheek to his eyes, and Richie is staring at him with something like surprise. Or maybe — longing? Eddie’s never been longed for before. His heart squeezes in his chest. He pulls his hand away. 

“Got it,” he says in a voice much too soft.

Richie’s still looking at him like _that._ “Thanks, Eds,” he says, just as soft.

The moment lingers, and Eddie thinks _I should kiss him. I really want to fucking kiss him._ He sticks his keys in the ignition and says, “Buckle up. I’m gonna head toward Riverton, but once my phone turns back on and we’re in service range could you look up directions to a hotel?”

“Sure,” Richie says, blinking a few times. He buckles his seatbelt and Eddie backs up the car. He takes a moment to look up at the trailhead again, at the smoke he can see billowing thick and black from the Tozier Fire further in. He lets out a slow breath, and then they’re driving away. 

It’s an hour and a half to Riverton, and they’ve only been driving for about fifteen minutes when Eddie can’t take it anymore. He flicks on his blinker and pulls onto the shoulder of the highway, putting the car in park. He stares at the steering wheel and sighs.

“Is… something wrong?” Richie asks uncertainly.

Eddie looks up at him. “Are we being weird right now? I’m not the only one feeling that, right? Like, what’s happening? Why was this so much easier over a goddamn radio?”

Richie huffs out a surprised laugh. “Shit, Eds, everything’s easier when you don’t have to look anyone in the eye. Back there it’s like… a fantasy world, I don’t know.”

“So — do you not want…?” Eddie can’t even say it. He didn’t think it would be this fucking _hard,_ to interact in real life. He’s a goddamn adult, he should be able to have a conversation without some shitty outdated walkie talkies in the way.

“No, that’s not what I meant. Eddie, I really care about you,” Richie says. “Like, probably way fucking more than makes sense for how long we’ve known each other. I’ve told you shit I haven’t told anyone else, and I — I _trust_ you. And that’s not just because of the radios, because I’ve made buddies with other lookouts before but I’ve never… it’s never been like this. You make me feel like myself, Eds, and I don’t know about you, but I meant everything I said before on the walkies. I want you to come visit me in LA. I want to _be_ with you.” He sucks in a breath and then looks away, his gaze dropping to his lap.

Eddie feels dizzy with — too many feelings, but mostly _relief._ “I meant all of it, too. I’m kind of crazy about you, dude. Which is like, scary, right? Everything about this is scary and maybe insane? But I — I don’t usually feel _certain_ about shit, but I feel certain about this. You make me feel really fuckin’ brave.”

Richie looks back at him again, and his smile is soft. “Aw, Eds. That wasn’t me. You’ve been brave the whole time. Seriously, look at you, dude! All tan and rugged, you’re like a hot little badass! You’re _so_ fucking brave. It’s scary as shit to come out and do this job, and you did it. That was all you.” 

Eddie blinks a few times. His stomach is full of butterflies. “Richie,” he manages, and then doesn’t say anything else. He thinks about how all he wanted this summer, all he _has_ wanted for so long, was to figure out who the hell Eddie Kaspbrak is without someone else calling the shots. What he’s capable of, the kind of person he could be. And now Richie’s telling him he’s _brave,_ and Eddie thinks — you know what? Fuck it. Maybe Eddie Kaspbrak is brave. Maybe he’s brave enough to do _this._

He unbuckles his seatbelt and pushes up his armrest. Richie, god fucking bless him, catches on very quickly and follows suit, scrambling to unbuckle and move his armrest out of the way too. They lean forward over the gearshift and Richie’s hand is on Eddie’s face, Eddie’s fingers curling into Richie’s collar, and their mouths press together. Eddie’s whole body feels like it’s alight, the Tozier Fire roaring to life inside his chest, and presses his tongue against Richie’s bottom lip until he opens his mouth with a tiny gasp. Richie’s hand smooths along the side of Eddie’s face, long fingers stroking his cheek, the shell of his ear. Eddie licks into Richie’s mouth, and Richie holds him even closer, his other hand coming up to cradle the back of Eddie’s head. They breathe against each other’s mouths. Richie leans in again, messy and off-center, catching the corner of Eddie’s mouth before correcting and tugging on Eddie’s bottom lip.

“Mm, fuck,” Eddie gasps, sliding his hands up the sides of Richie’s neck. Richie’s stubble rasps against Eddie’s chin and mouth, and it makes him shiver. “Rich… god, I thought about this — mmph — so much,” he says, between kisses.

Richie laughs, and his voice is husky like it was that night over the walkies. “I’m so fuckin’ into you, holy shit.” He traces his thumb over Eddie’s lip, and Eddie lets him press it into his mouth, against his tongue. “Holy shit,” Richie says again, breathless. He withdraws his thumb so he can replace it with his mouth. Eddie can feel Richie’s pulse thrumming under his fingers where they rest just below his jaw. He feels like he’s being kissed for the first time in his life. His mind echoes what Richie said earlier: _it’s never been like this._

Eddie drags his mouth across Richie’s jaw, kissing down his throat, and Richie’s fingers twist into the hair at Eddie’s nape. Eddie presses his tongue to the pulse point he felt under his hand a moment ago, and Richie whimpers. “Ugh, god, get back up here,” he says, dragging Eddie back up to capture his lips again. They kiss like they could keep going for hours — Eddie’s head swims, his skin flushed and warm. Richie licks behind Eddie’s teeth, sucks on his tongue, cups the side of his face and kisses him so firm and thorough that he feels like he’s going to melt right into his seat.

They have to really pull back eventually, because twisting in their seats to kiss and clutch at each other isn’t a very sustainable position for more than a few minutes. Eddie’s head hits the headrest with a muffled _thump_ as he leans back, panting slightly. He rolls his head to one side so he can look at Richie, who’s already looking at him with a pleased grin curling the corners of his mouth.

“You’re brave too, you know,” Eddie tells him, and Richie’s smile slips slightly, his expression turning to one of mild confusion. “Being open with me about shit, that takes guts, man. And if I can help — you deserve to feel like you can be yourself with everyone. Everyone deserves to know the real you, you’re — you’re really great.”

Richie’s already flushed face grows even pinker. “I… yeah. Maybe you’re right.” He looks down, smiling. “Thanks, Eds.” He runs a hand over his jaw, fingers brushing his lips like he’s searching for the phantom press of Eddie’s mouth against his again. “Ready to keep moving, Kaspbrak? As much as I’d like to keep making out like teenagers on the side of the road, I can think of something I bet you’d like even more.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

Richie raises his eyebrows and does jazz hands. “A hotel bathroom with a real shower.”

Eddie groans, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. _“God,_ yes. Fucking indoor plumbing, oh my god. Who invented indoor plumbing? Google that when we have cell service. They’re the most important person in history.” 

Richie cracks up. “Alright, you fucking weirdo, let’s get this show on the road.” 

They both buckle up again and Eddie eases back onto the highway. He can’t stop smiling, and he knows Richie is looking at him and smiling, too. Eddie’s chest swells with the sudden, overwhelming knowledge that he has his whole life ahead of him now, to do whatever the fuck he wants to do and be whoever the fuck he wants to be.

The road opens up before them, and Eddie drives forward into the first day of the rest of his life. 

**Author's Note:**

> please leave a comment if you'd like, i would love to know what you think! i really have a thing for stories with a radio motif, i guess. hmu on twitter @hermanngottiieb or tumblr @joshuawashinton if you wanna say hi!


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